I have little doubt that my teenage daughter and her friends get tired of their middle-aged mothers waxing poetic about "the good old days."
Often, our memories aren't even that rose-colored. Much of the time, we're pointing out all the privileges and luxuries that our offspring enjoy that we didn't — or couldn't — way back when.
Invariably, the greatest contrast between the then and the now falls into the category of technology.
When I was growing up, our family had one television. (In fact, it was a black and white one until my father splurged when I was in the sixth grade and we moved up to color.) Five people, one TV, and just three networks plus PBS and a couple of independent stations — until cable came along which more than doubled our options and gave us what seemed like a magical new one, the commercial-free movies of an early HBO.
Even with all those alternatives, though, the television was a great entertainment unifier. When it came down to it, you had one choice really: watch what everyone else was watching. Or don't watch at all.
(Does anyone remember books? But, I digress.)
Consider the very different situation in our wired household today. We have a much smaller family, but many more screens. We have three televisions, all color (a small one in the kitchen, a medium one tucked into an antique Chinese cabinet in the living room, and the widest widescreen we could fit into a built-in in what we call a family room but what is, in essence, a TV and a couch). And, we have far fewer televisions (per capita or otherwise) than most contemporary families we know.
But, wait. There's more. With apologies to Madonna, we are living in a digital world. So, we need to count the four computers in the house (one each, plus a company-owned laptop that my husband brings back and forth from his office each day). I received an iPad for my fiftieth birthday (the screen of which has since been cracked, and not by me). Plus, we each have an iPhone, which can stream YouTube videos, entire TV episodes and movies too.
So, measuring by today's more varied options, we have eleven screens for three people. I'm sorry (or maybe proud) to say that no one owns an Apple Watch yet.
Then again, check with me in a year or so.
What does all this mean? Well, choice, obviously. We have more than a thousand channels via our cable company, plus time-shifted DVR recordings, on demand options and pay-per-view. Thanks to my brother (who has, for years, been the supplier for our media habits), we have access to Netflix and Amazon Prime, which adds tens or maybe hundreds of thousands more titles to the mix. Our DVD and VHS (yes, VHS) collection would be massive by 1999 standards and is still respectable today.
And so, in addition to a rather mind-numbing number of options, the other byproduct of all this is that there is no reason, pretty much ever, for the whole family to relax together in one room in front of the same screen.
Assuming my husband has no handyman projects, I have no deadlines and the offspring has no homework, you can usually find us in separate rooms, consuming different programs. This leads to peaceful cohabitation perhaps. But not much else. When your show of choice is over, there's no one to compare notes with.
There are a handful of exceptions. (We watched Downton Abbey together — via a boxed set pre-ordered from amazon.uk. I highly recommend this route to any other rabid fans. You'll get the final season two full months before the rest of the yanks.) But, in general, in our house and others, television has become a rather private and isolating activity.
Would I rather take a step backward to less choice but more family time?
Yes, yes I would.
But, don't tell my daughter.
She doesn't need another confirmation of how out of it I am.
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One of the really nice things about coming from New York is that you don't have to look very far to find movies and TV shows that feature your very own hometown. There's Blue Bloods, Girls, Elementary, How I Met Your Mother, Ugly Betty, 30 Rock, CSI: NY and, of course, Sex and the City. The Good Wife is supposed to be set in Chicago, but it's filmed in New York, and if you think about it, Washington's Embassy Row in Madam Secretary looks just like Manhattan's Riverside Drive.
Oh wait ... it is Manhattan's Riverside Drive.
Whenever I'm homesick, all I have to do is find You've Got Mail on cable or pull out my well-worn DVD. Meg Ryan's adorable "Shop Around the Corner" is quite literally around the corner from where I grew up. The whole movie is pretty much a love poem to my neighborhood (not surprising, it was Nora Ephron's 'hood too). I may live in New England, but I'm still an Upper Westsider.
Maybe that's why I don't get Gossip Girl.
Maybe you have to be from the East Side.
In the last two weeks, we've had four snow days (the first and only snow days of the year — so far at least). Once she slept in until 11, once her homework was (halfheartedly) done, once she and a neighbor and the neighbor's little brother went sledding, my daughter was b-o-r-e-d. Bored. Luckily, despite snowmageddon rounds one and two, we never lost power or cable service or WiFi. My high honors high school student — who has been exposed to fine art and world-class culture since, well, birth — did what any red-blooded American teen would do.
She binged on Netflix.
Did she watch documentaries? The Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice? Downton Abbey? The BBC's Little Dorrit? Of course not. She watched back-to-back (to-back-to-back) episodes of Gossip Girl.
Here's where I came in. I was getting some cabin fever of my own. Although most of my clients were working through the blizzards, it was fairly quiet. The Y was closed and the lack of sidewalks and 8-foot snow piles at every intersection kept me from my usual walks. So, I decided to settle in and watch with her.
"Hey, Upper Eastsiders," saluted the anonymous and oh-so-snarky eponymous narrator at the beginning of the show. She then proceeded to air all the dirty laundry of Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf and assorted other prep school pretties with preposterous names. Apparently Manhattan's elite high schoolers party very hard, wear multiple designer outfits each day and live in absolutely palatial apartments on Park Avenue. (Except for one artsy family that lives in a funky, though equally palatial, loft in Brooklyn.) There are affairs and intrigues and eating disorders. The mothers (all of whom look considerably younger than I do) veer toward the frowsy and slightly inebriated. Then again, they aren't the main event. Their kids are. They own Manhattan.
Just like we did back in 1979, right?
Um ... not!
I went to high school on Park Avenue myself, but my experience couldn't have been farther from that of Serena and Blair. We were a school full of brainy kids, and accordingly most of us were, shall we say, fashion-challenged. No designer outfits (except, naturally, my Calvin Klein jeans). No outrageous parties. No last minute trips to Rio with a new boyfriend. We did homework, and went to the library and violin lessons and play rehearsals, and babysat on the weekends so we'd have pocket money.
It makes me wonder if today's teen audience thinks that there are really people living the Gossip Girl life. Not many, I'd tell them. Not many, if any.
Then again, people still ask me if living in NYC is like Seinfeld or, worse, The Real Housewives. No. It's not. And growing up there wasn't like The Carrie Diaries either.
Maybe someday I'll write a TV series about what it was really like.
Then again, I don't think it would do very well on Netflix.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
